


It Takes Two

by AntiqueBlue



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Guilt, M/M, Psychology, Reflection, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22613779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiqueBlue/pseuds/AntiqueBlue
Summary: Albus Dumbledore must confront the past in order to ensure a future. The chance comes from the hands of none other than Newt Scamander, as he returns to Hogwarts after the events in France. And it is presented to him in form of nothing else, but a blood pact he cooperated in once upon a foolish time.Older, wiser yet just as wounded, a night of trying to cope ensues for "the world's only wizard who could stand a chance".
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	It Takes Two

It was long after midnight that Dumbledore sat in front of the magnificent fireplace of his office. The flames in the open mouth of the dragon blazed away and he couldn’t do anything but gaze, fingers fickling about the physical proof of his teenage shame, forever carried, imprinted on his flesh, his bones, the very essence of his existence. Time flew past it, and new experiences and wisdom sprung all around. Nothing could penetrate that core. Nothing could break it. He was it and it was him. The blood pact. 

He kept placing the object on a table next to him just to have his fingers subconsiously return for it minutes later. He was deep in thought for hours. Halfway through a wine bottle since about an hour before. A dull headache started creeping upon his temples. His sensitive area, especially when he was a teenager. Whenever Ariana had one of her episodes, he would feel that same headache. A connection, the understanding of which, still after years of research and genuine curiosity, eluded him. Ever since her passing, there were only a few times they came back for him. 

Ariana’s cold, frail fingers reaching for him, he felt them all over his chest. Her poor breath on his throat and his cheeks. She wanted to speak but she didn’t have a voice to convey her message.

All of a sudden, he was there again. A teenager, standing on that beach, and he was loosing her. No, there never was a loosing her. He simply lost her from one moment to another. 

One second of having everything. An eternity of deprivement and suffering for being foolish enough to think he could hold that. 

He was short of air all of a sudden and he shot up from his sofa in an acute frenzy. He gripped on the object in his palm for dear life.

His panic attack was intervened by a thought of bewilderment. How come? He didn’t realise he was holding it again. 

He gave it a proper look for the first time. The red was the reddest crimson he had seen in his entire life. In the light of the fire, there was no escaping what he always knew he could never escape in the first place. But suddenly, there was strange comfort with the fact, as there is with many things, contemplated by fires. Or maybe it was just the reality that truly observing a physical object, any, even it happens to be the bane of one’s existence, is what a mind latches onto under a threat of a panic attack. 

The motion. Quite beautiful.

Designed to be so.

The red. Most exquisite.

As things were.

The delicacy of the ornaments, the unyielding look at the handle, however small. 

And to think that he kept it and carried it around for all those years. It took all of his will and the slight buzz in his mind not to think about the motives that could be behind that decision on Grindelwald’s part. 

And to think one of those droplets came of the man. 

Which one could it be?

Well, there were only two. His eyes followed their motion, switching in tiny movements between one or the other.

So close.

They were so close.

Locked together.

And there was a fifty percent chance...

The object fell out of his hands.

He went to get more wine. 

.


End file.
